Four years ago…. September 28, 2012

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Thanks for posting that and marking the anniversary of the bank guarantee. Strange that it seems largely to have passed us by unnoticed. A function of how used we’ve become to seismic changes in the years in September 2008.

What this clip demonstrates is not only Morgan Kelly’s prescience, which has been vindicated by subsequent events, but also what an ass, an absolute ass, Brendan Keenan is. He was contemptuous of many of the arguments Kelly made and offered absolutely, in retrospect, fantastically outlandish points about what the banks would eventually require from the state. The other guy from the stockbroking firm was equally off the mark.

It’s shocking that Keenan retains such an influential position in Irish journalism. That someone could be so spectacularly wrong, or at least incapable of acknowledging the extent to which the guarantee could have extreme unforseen consequences, and yet continue week in, week out writing on the Irish economy as it implodes around him is a testament to how incompetence is rife within our private sector and that incompetence is tolerated and rewarded. Journalistic competence in the above clip would have included some degree of acknowledgement of the difficulties the guarantee might bring in its wake and some engagement with Morgan Kelly’s perspective. Instead, Keenan adopts a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ stance and attempts to rubbish Kelly. Epitomising, in this clip, all that is wrong with Irish journalism and why it continues to mis-shape and distort debate and understandings here.

This clip is marginally better on the blood pressure then Neary’s outing two days later. There is another of Kelly and Jim Power the year before where he lays out the stark reality of the property market. Problems people aren’t yet even ready to admit let alone begin to face. Jim ‘fundamentally disagrees’ with his analysis and five years on still on every TV & radio show weekly comparing lone parents raising children to having a second home.